River Deep, Mountain High [Paperback]

It's Groundhog Day for Dafydd Thomas ("Old Taff"), acting Head Teacher of Mountain High, a failing comprehensive school in the valleys of South Wales. His life has come full circle, as this is the school he attended himself as a pupil in the 1970s. To underline the déjà vu, one of his staff is Megan, one of his old classmates, for whom he still nurses unrequited love and lust. Another is Trolley, one of their former teachers, still every bit as terrifying to Dafydd as he was thirty years ago.

Dafydd wakes up with a hangover and an inflatable rubber woman, both outcomes of last night's birthday celebrations. He contemplates the coming day with dread. Today he faces both a visit from a school inspector from hell and an interview by the governors for the job of permanent Head. Meanwhile he has to run a school in meltdown, with some pupils bordering on the homicidal, to say nothing of the parents. Many of his staff openly flout his authority, sometimes trying to have their cake and eat it ("he's only an Acting Head, and they should have given me the job in any case").

But the biggest challenge for Dafydd - and the few of his staff who still care about their pupils - is the modern educational system, putting measurement before achievement and trumpeting "standards" while moving standards ever lower. Dafydd lurches from crisis to crisis, until a ghost starts a series of conversations with him. The ghost is "Young Taff", his younger, schoolboy self. Although Young Taff is already healthily cynical, he makes it his job to convince Old Taff to succeed, in order to make worthwhile all the efforts of Young Taff at school, university and beyond. Old Taff might even have a chance, after all these years, of finally winning Megan...

This novel is composed in equal parts of hilarious educational misadventure (?Lucky Jim at Bash Street?) and diatribes against the aridity of modern education. Gareth Calway writes about the latter with evident knowledge and great passion. In view of Calway's high expectations for standards in English, the lack of proof-reading is a great shame, but a common fault these days. (I suppose it proves his point!) The end is somewhat of an anti-climax, but one could argue that the events and observations are more important in this novel than the structure, dramatic and otherwise.

There is also, with more echoes of Kingsley Amis, a fair amount of commentary on Welshness, both real and fake. Calway has fierce pride and sympathy for the old "heavy industrial males" in South Wales, who have been left behind by a supposedly brave new culture.

Odd, isn't it, how many picaresque novels have been written about university - Amis, Bradbury, Lodge etc - and how few about school. Well done Gareth.

This is a good novel that takes a good hard look at the rank stupidity of much that passes for education in the post Thatcher era. It is very well written with some lovely turns of phrase. Calway handles the freneticism of the school day particularly well and writes about pressure in a gloriously pressured way.

My only criticism here is that the novel is too long and Calway has been allowed to indulge himself a little too much: a stronger editorial hand would have turned this into a five star novel.

That said, and it is not a major criticism, this is well worth buying and reading if you have ever been to school as a pupil or a teacher. It's all there and very well handled by a writer whose poetic credentials shine through in much of his dialogue.

Oh, and by the way, it is ultimately a very lovely love story.

This is a really funny book! I laughed out loud many times as I followed Dafydd on his momentous day. He is such a frustrating character in his personal relationships , and so obviously right ( I did so sympathise with him ) in his professional life. The satire is biting, both about school life and about Wales. The book is packed with comic incidents and outrageous, but thoroughly convincing, characters. I loved the schoolboy, Tommy, who seems to know more about what's going on than anyone else, the retired headmaster, who frightens little children, and the tiny inspector, who takes notes about all the goings-on. A real treat!